Locals rejected plans for nuke plant on fault line

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, March 15, 2011

How does a long-ago Skagit County vote relate to desperate efforts in earthquake-ravaged Japan to prevent massive radiation releases from three permanently disabled nuclear reactors?

In 1979, citizens in the "Magic Skagit" rejected, by public vote, a massive twin-reactor project to be sited at Baucus Hill near Sedro Woolley, after a fault line was discovered. Earlier, they resisted plans by Seattle City Light and the Snohomish County PUD to plunk down nuclear plants on Kiket and Samish Islands.

A conservative county helped spare us Japan-like consequences if/when we get hit by the "Big One," the massive quake and tsunami when the offshore Cascadian plate next moves on this side of the Pacific.

Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.

Blackouts were predicted. BPA Administrator Don Hodel had labeled critics "prophets of shortage" and likened them to Luddites in England who resisted the Industrial Revolution.

Utility brass nearly melted down the Northwest economy before they were stopped. They left a trail of dead nukies from Hanford to Satsop near the Washington Coast.

The Northwest was spared huge reactors dotting its coastline and running up against its earthquake faults. We opted for a different course, and the lights -- yep, they're still on -- illuminate a new technology economy not even dreamed of by those who championed huge power plants.

Why bring up "old" history? Because it is a not-so-distant mirror on "new" history.

The nuclear industry is with us still. It gets the blessing of President Barack Obama, despite the fact that he pulled the plug on using Nevada's Yucca Mountain to store "spent" but intensively radioactive fuel rods.

The Washington Public Power Supply System fiasco, which left us with four abandoned, partly built reactors, hasn't deterred industry interest in the Northwest. Every three months or so, a prominent flack with Democratic connections tries "casually" to sound me out on a potentially glowing energy future.

"Nuclear Power: Clean, Cheap, Safe" said a hotel marquee sign in Richland during the height of WPPSS' construction program.

The plant -- now the Northwest's one operating nukie -- ended up costing $3.2 billion, and started generating kilowatts seven years after the predicted operating date.

The experience shouts out this message: Question authority. So does the record of evasion, half-truths and untruths of Japan's nuclear industry. Watch authority. Our Reps. Jay Inslee and Dave Reichert helped block a 2006 refinery-siting bill that would have eased seismic standards.

The Skagit questioned. A UW geology professor, working for the U.S. Geological Survey, discovered a possibly active earthquake fault virtually beneath the Baucus Hill site.

The locals saw a problem: In a 1979 referendum, they voted 72 percent against playing home to giant twin reactors. The project became an atomic Flying Dutchman, its location moved to Hanford before finally being scrapped -- an outcome that, years later, Ellis would call "heartbraking."

Skagit-based artists, notorious tightwads, offered up their wares at a festival to pay legal bills for the group "Skagitonians Concerned About Nuclear Power." En route home from a Mt. Baker hike, we stopped at the celebration.

A visiting college buddy, just out of the Wharton School, found himself talking with Helen Day and Sophie Neble, two elderly ladies who spearheaded resistance to the utility. Both wore shocking purple pants.

My budding capitalist friend broke off and took me aside with an urgent question: "Do these people have any influence?"

Yep, and that's part of the reason we don't have giant nuclear power plants sitting in harm's way.

Columnist Joel Connelly has written about politcs for the P-I since 1973.